Extreme red-flag warning
The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library is under threat from a new blaze near Los Angeles – one of several wildfires burning across California.
The region is under a rare “extreme red-flag warning” from weather officials as gusts approach hurricane-level speeds, over 70mph (113km/h).
There is concern that the winds will also fan the nearby Getty fire, which has burned through 745 acres.
Wildfires across California have led to mass evacuations and power cuts.
Here’s the thing about California: much of it is desert, actual dry-as-tinder desert, some of which has been irrigated into hugely productive farmland by taking water out of rivers all over the west, and from the aquifer. California has used up much of that water and it’s not coming back: the aquifer can’t be refilled, and the rivers aren’t being refilled because there is less and less snow melt all the time. Most of inhabited California is brown most of the year, because that’s how dry it is. These fires are the new normal and it’s only going to get worse.
The extreme weather alert covers Los Angeles, Ventura and San Bernardino counties.
Winds are expected pick up early on Wednesday and continue into Thursday, with forecasters warning that they could hit their highest speeds of the season.
“This Santa Ana wind event will likely be the strongest we have seen so far this season,” the weather service said.
“These strong winds… will likely bring very critical fire weather conditions, making this an extreme red-flag warning event.”
This isn’t the future, it’s now.
I would hope the firefighters aren’t trying to save the Reagan Library. He would hate to have his legacy saved by government employees.
Snerk. I snarled aloud at the mention of it – who cares about the Reagan “Library”??
And much the same is happening in Australia.
https://www.nature.com/collections/kpzbllmxxw?gclid=Cj0KCQjw6eTtBRDdARIsANZWjYbQdEAlNXITCMwYjR9ppEZDFn5h31Z0ZrjWTtjGTJXxmeDmE9zvkh8aAqGUEALw_wcB
That goes to a list of articles; did you mean one in particular?
I’m interested. I’ve been reading a book from 1986 called Cadillac Desert lately; it’s about the illusions we USians have about the western US, and the deranged things people have done to try to turn a gigantic desert into fertile farmland. It’s a sad tale and it’s only going to get worse.
Perhaps I’m being a bit nit-pickerish here, but the fires in CA are not in “desert”. Nearly all are in areas where the natural vegetation is Mediterranean shrubland or shrubland/forest. In the LA basin you get, primarily coastal sage with dry forest at higher elevation. All of these woodland/shrubland types are highly fire-prone, in fact adapted to burn and to recover from fire. The fuel load is much higher than in any true desert, and that’s why wildfires so easily sweep through suburbs and cities.
Irrigated farming isn’t sustainable, and surface and underground extraction for all purposes obviously affect streamflow and fish migration. But the hydrology hardly affects the pattern of wildfire.
Of course, global warming WILL shift the patterns of rainfall and consequently the vegetation northward. LA and the southern coast ranges will become true desert, Corvallis OR [where I live will be more like Redding CA, and Seattle will be more like Medford OR. And the transition will involve a lot of wildfire.
No feel free to correct, I’m interested.
The Cadillac Desert book says core lowland LA was desert – not the hills but the sea level part. I didn’t mean to imply the desert bit was causing the fires in the hills, but more that much of the water has been used up and the whole enterprise is just not sustainable. Plus FIRE. Rambling, in short.
I read Cadillac Desert a number of years ago. It’s a very interesting book. My students won’t pick it from my reading list because it’s long.
It is. It’s telling me a lot I didn’t know.
OB @ #4: climatologists predict an increasing probability of extreme weather events with Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). But the first article IMHO is a good place to start.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-018-0057-1
As you would I am sure know, the atmosphere-hydrosphere-lithosphere-cryosphere-biosphere setup is the most complex system we know about, in the entire Universe. (The best book I know on it is linked below.) Climatology as a discipline to take account of all parts of it. Added to that, the human economy (a wholly-owned subsidiary of the biosphere) is wall-to-wall with vested interests, which are all well-connected politically. So there really is no such discipline as economics as such. There is at the very least only political economy.
Seinfeld and Pandis, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics [1120 pp.]) https://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?q=atmospheric+chemistry+and+physics,+Seinfeld+and+Pandis&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholartClimatology.)
I ask my students if they think the Economy® is complicated. They get big eyes and nod. They believe it is about the most complicated thing they’ve ever encountered. I tell them the Economy® is simple, very simple, compared to the planetary system.
I guess it’s a good thing they don’t believe me, because they’d all get scared and drop my class and I’d lose my job; by the end of the semester, they’re convinced.
http://explosm.net/comics/5390/
:(
latsot – that is all too close to home.
Isn’t it.
My son lives in Sacramento, and when we were talking last night he was telling me a joke he heard at work. He said that the firefighters should just focus on everything else; the water they were using to fight the surrounding fires would trickle down and save the Reagan library. I thought that was pretty good.